Flashes of Light and Unfinished Sentences
by Northwestern
Summary: She's just searching for a bloke.


A/N: My first (published) Doctor Who fic! Takes place post-TBB/pre-Turn Left. Thank you to everyone that has listened to me over the past few months… you know who you are!

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He's just finished saying goodbye to River (as cryptic as ever, of course) when there's a sudden burst of light. Immediately, he is thrust into a state of awareness, but then fails to notice anything out of place. Although he usually didn't dismiss any observances he might have, coming back from the void between worlds had probably done a wonder on his many senses.

Time to get back to the party. He smiled to himself as he made his way back to the reception hall. He had never been very good with weddings or receptions but he had to give it to Mr and Mrs Pond – they knew how to throw a brilliant party! He had almost reached the building, the loud music blasting from inside when a guest ran into him, knocking him down as he was going to open the door.

"Oh my gosh! I'm sorry. Didn't look where I was going!" He felt a figure kneel beside him.

"No problem, takes a bit more than falling down to off me.." the rest of his sentence trailed off as the woman who had nearly run into him came into his vision.

"You alright there mate?" _she_ asked again.

He had said that he would skip the rest of the rewind, yet somehow the universe had decided that wasn't an option. She was leaning over him, her dyed blonde hair nearly reaching his face as she worriedly looked him over, dark under eye circles incredibly apparent on her face told him exactly where she was in her time. He pulled himself up, needing to get away from her touch, it would do no good for her to figure out who he was.

"Good as new! Anyways, you had probably go on your way!" he enthusiastically proclaimed, desperate to avoid any unnecessary, messy paradoxes. His previous self had practically written the book on overcoming impossibilities and breaking rules when it had come to this human girl.

She frowned, and something darker crossed her features. He stilled, unmistakably aware in that second that perhaps he wasn't as distanced from the pinstripe-wearing version of himself as he often liked to think.

"How do you know I'm not just taking a break from dancing? Maybe that's one of my best mates from university – Emily, wasn't it?"

"Amelia." He softly provides.

"Right." She responds, even softer, then continues, "Bet you're wondering what a crazy girl is doin' running out on a perfectly nice reception in the middle of who knows where and who knows when? Stupid bloody device!"

"I'm sure you have a perfectly valid reason. Nevermind what other people think. Do what you like, I always say! Well, no, I don't… Maybe I should! Yes! Do what you like!"

She lets out a laugh and continues, "I'm looking for a bloke. Not just any bloke, but still, all of this for a bloke? Can you imagine? Everyone thinks I'm crazy. And I thought I had set my tracker correctly this time…"

"Must be some lucky guy."

This seems to amuse her even more and she gives him a sad smile. "Last time I saw him I told him I loved him and he disappeared before saying it back, if he was even going to, I mean..."

Suddenly, a beeping noise filled the air. She pulled up the sleeve of her leather jacket and looked at what he assumed to be the device that had allowed her to come _here_.

"Look, I've, uh, got to go. Sorry for unloading my personal problems on you and pushing you over, yeah?" her tone was remorseful, yet at the same time, weary, no doubt from what probably seemed to her, a lost cause.

"Don't worry about me, I'll always be alright. And you'll find your bloke. Oh, and don't worry about what he couldn't say. I'm pretty certain that he loves you, Rose."

She smiled brilliantly. "Yeah?"

"Yes." He answered, sounding more sure than he had about anything that day.

And with that, she vanished, off to a world where zeppelins were a constant presence in the sky, and would soon be joined by a bloke that was just as much as impossibility as she had always been.

'_And would be,' _ he thought to himself, making his way back inside the reception hall; memories once laced with longing and heartbreak, now merely ones of fondness and good times.

It's a few years later when she remembers that she never told him her name.


End file.
